Introduction

The term Kafkaesque cinema is frequently used but it has rarely been subjected to any thorough conceptualization, leading many scholars to use it interchangeably for an aesthetics of obscurity. The ambition of the introduction is to invite the reader to think about Kafkaesque cinema beyond Kafka. Starting with a critique of the general understanding of the term in film studies, the introduction addresses Kafka’s multimedia modernism by doing a review of the secondary literature. This review will show that scholarship has mainly focused on Kafka’s “cinematic writing”, or the film/tv adaptation of his texts rather than on Kafkaesque cinema. The last section introduces the key thesis of the book that there is a Kafkaesque cinema before and after Kafka, whose aesthetic can be seen as a response to the crisis of liberalism in its longue durée.